El lenguaje produce sus propios problemas, sus propias tensiones, sus propios retos y, por tanto, su propia selección, tanto natural como crítica.

All political ideals, that of making the people happy is perhaps the most dangerous one. It leads invariably to the attempt to impose our scale of ‘higher’ values upon others, in order to make them realize what seems to us of greatest importance for their happiness; in order, as it were, to save their souls. It leads to Utopianism and Romanticism. We all feel certain that everybody would be happy in the beautiful, the perfect community of our dreams.

Como dice Dobzhansky, cuando la primera autoconciencia apareció en la humanidad, estaba unida a la conciencia de la muerte. A ella estaba unido el terror a la existencia; no sólo la admiración, sino también el terror y el espanto. Las mentes creadoras de aquellos tiempos primitivos tienen que haber luchado con esta nueva iluminación

Scientific’ Marxism is dead. Its feeling of social responsibility and its love for freedom must survive.

The 'conspiracy theory of society' is a typical result of a secularization of a religious superstition. The belief in the Homeric gods whose conspiracies explain the history of the Trojan War is gone. The gods are abandoned. But their place is filled by powerful men or groups - sinister pressure groups whose wickedness is responsible for all the evils we suffer from - such as the Learned Elders of Zion, or the monopolists, or the capitalists, or the imperialists.

It is our duty to help those who need our help; but it cannot be our duty to make others happy, since this does not depend on us, and since it would only too often mean intruding on the privacy of those towards whom we have such amiable intentions.

The theory I have in mind is one which does not proceed, as it were, from a doctrine of the intrinsic goodness or righteousness of a majority rule, but rather from the baseness of tyranny; or more precisely, it rests upon the decision, or upon the adoption of the proposal, to avoid and to resist tyranny.

Instead of the greatest happiness for the greatest number, one should demand, more modestly, the least amount of avoidable suffering for all; and further, that unavoidable suffering—such as hunger in times of an unavoidable shortage of food—should be distributed as equally as possible.

What we need and what we want is to moralize politics, not to politicize morals.

Science must begin with myths, and with the criticism of myths.